The browser component allows you to embed a browser window right on your DAQFactory pages. This has a wide variety of uses, including the ability to display video from IP cameras, display PDF documents right on a page, and more. This component has but one property, the starting URL used when the component loads. If you name the component, there is a function called SetURL() which allows you to change the URL from script as well. This does not change the starting URL, just the current URL.
The browser component has a unique event: OnRequest. This is called whenever the browser makes a request for a URL. The event will pass in the URL as a string variable URL which you can process. If you return a nonzero value from the event, then the browser will not process the URL itself.
The Browser component is a bit different then other components. The browser is actually a windowed component, meaning it runs on top of the page. This causes several things:
•A browser component will always be on top of other components. Two browser components on top of each other will have unpredictable ordering.
•Once you place the browser and deselect it you will not be able to select it again by clicking on it because those clicks (including Ctrl-Clicks) are passed to the browser. Instead, in order to select the browser component you must find it in the Workspace under your Page. For this reason, unless you only have one browser component, we recommend naming your browser components. Since right clicks are also passed to the browser, you can only rename the component in the workspace by right clicking on the browser component listed under your page and selecting Rename....
•If the browser is larger than the Page, it may overlap your control bars. It will clip to the DAQFactory window, but does not get clipped by your control bars (i.e. command / alert, workspace, etc).
•The browser component will not print.
The browser itself is an embedded form of the Chrome browser. In general you do not need to install Chrome to use this component. Plugins like Acrobat may work, however you will likely need to install the plugins outside of DAQFactory. This may require you to install Chrome to get the plugins to install. You may be able to uninstall Chrome after the plugins are installed, however you will need to experiment with this.
Note: we do not recommend using the browser component for general browsing. It should only be used to view pages that can be maintained and tested before going into production, preferably ones that are hosted locally. While it is not possible for a website to manipulate DAQFactory, it is possible for a website to crash the browser and this crash could very likely also crash DAQFactory.
